Odds & Ends: News/Humor (with a "Who Lost the Week?" poll)

CHEERS to Bill and Michael in PWM, our Laramie, Wyoming-based friend Irish Patti and ...... well, each of you at Cheers and Jeers. Have a fabulous weekend .... and week ahead. If you celebrate either: Happy Passover and/or Easter.

IN THE PHOTO ABOVE — two friends from Netroots Nation, kjoftherock and Cedwyn— who are no longer of this Earth, and whom I miss dearly on days like this day of renewal.

ART NOTES — an exhibition entitled Monsters & Myths: Surrealism and War in the 1930s and 1940s— responding to the real-world monstrosities of violence and war brought on by the Spanish Civil War and World War II — will be at the Baltimore, Maryland Museum of Art through May 26th.

Max Ernst, “Europe after the Rain II, 1940-1942”

RELIEF that a conference of European nativist political parties held in Milan earlier this month by the head of Italy’s xenophobic Northern League — who may possible score gains in next month’s European Parliament elections — did not attract many attendees, as “movements created to protect national interests and exalt national identities … tend to make awkward bedfellows, after all”.

LAST MONTH the Library of Congress named its annual twenty-five additions to its National Recording Registry— recordings selected for their cultural and aesthetic significance in history — and this year’s additions include Cab Calloway’s “Minnie the Moocher”, Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddamn”, Richie Valen’s “La Bamba”, Sam & Dave’s “Soul Man”, classical composer Benjamin Britten’s “War Requiem”, a 1961 Stan Freberg album of political comedy and also early Yiddish recordings from the beginning of the 20th Century..

THURSDAY's CHILD is named Barsik the Cat— a forty-one lb. NYC kitteh who was dropped-off at a shelter …. and who will be put on a veterinarian-approved diet before he's put up for adoption.

            Barsik the Cat

EDUCATION NOTES — the 55-year-old Harlem School of the Arts announced the start of a major construction project that will significantly transform the 37,000 square foot facility — with trumpeter Herb Alpert (and his wife, Grammy Award-winning vocalist Lani Hall Alpert) funding the entire $9.5-million through the Herb Alpert Foundation.

URBANIZATION has transformed Spain into a large central capital city and enclaves on its coastlines … so much so that some 50k people marched through the center of Madrid in what they called “the rebellion of emptied-out Spain”.  

FRIDAY's CHILD is named Loki the Cat— a kitteh whom a Michigan man (who had adopted him three years earlier) found run-over dead in the road, and buried it …. only to have the real Loki show up at his back door.

  The still-alive Loki the Cat

CHEERS to learning that the GOP governor of Arkansas has approved a plan to remove two statues (from the US Capitol) of Arkansans associated with the Confederacy and replace them with civil rights pioneer Daisy Bates as well as music legend Johnny Cash.

HAPPY PASSOVER to those who celebrate .. and the Reiner family has a question:

x

Is there such a thing as “too Jewish”? pic.twitter.com/Wy8z4vqsOn

— romy reiner (@romyreiner) December 9, 2018

BRAIN TEASER - try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC.

SEPARATED at BIRTH — two models having a mother born in the Netherlands: American-born Gigi Hadid and the Dutch-born Iza Ijzerman.

  Gigi Hadid — born 1995

  Iza Ijzerman — born 1994

...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… NPR recently had a series entitled The Women Behind the Songs ... and one subject was Jessie Mae Robinson— one of the few African-American women to break the color barrier in songwriting after WW-II. And she did not have to settle for only the R&B market: she was able to write several crossover hits for white performers in the 1950’s.

Born in 1918 as Jessie Mae Booker in Cali, Texas, her family moved to the Watts section of Los Angeles in her youth. Talk about an over-achiever: as a teenager, she was a champion tap dancer, wrote for the African-American owned California Eagle newspaper and performed in WPA musicals (earning an Actor’s Equity Card). She later married Leonard Robinson, and worked under her married name.

Yet it was songwriting that proved to be her strong suit …. and her good fortune was to be a neighbor of Joe Adams, who would go on to be a manager of Ray Charles (and died just last year at the age of 94). Adams encouraged her to write her lyrics on plain paper, hum her melodies into a tape recorder, then take a bus into Hollywood so that she could have her songs transcribed onto sheet music that the musicians could use.

Adams owned a local studio and in 1945 he arranged for a young Dinah Washington to record the first Jessie Mae Robinson tune to appear on disc, “Mellow Mama Blues”, with her breakthrough single being Eddie ‘Cleanhead’ Vinson recording “Cleanhead Blues” in 1946. She wrote a number of songs made famous by R&B artists, including Amos Milburn (“In the Middle of the Night” and “Roomin’ House Boogie”), Louis Jordan (“Blue Light Boogie”), Little Esther & Johnny Otis (“Double Crossing Blues”), B.B. King (“Sneaking Around”) and both Sarah Vaughn as well as Nina Simone recorded “The Other Woman”.

In the early 50’s, she had her next breakthrough: her song “I Went to Your Wedding”— about seeing the love of your life marry someone else — was recorded by R&B singer Damita Jo (LeBlanc). Then, it was covered by two performers in other genres: the Canadian-born country musician Hank Snow and the pop singer Patti Page, whose version made it to #1 in the pop charts.

She then went on to have a number of successful hits recorded by white performers in the 1950’s, including Jo Stafford (“Keep It a Secret”), Frankie Laine (“I’m Just a Poor Bachelor”), and everyone from Elvis Presley to Wanda Jackson to (years later) Led Zeppelin recording her Let’s Have a Party.

She attempted to move into the record label business at the dawn of the 1960’s, yet had little success. Worse yet, her health started declining and when her doctors in 1966 recommended surgery for a chronic throat problem …. she declined, fearing losing her voice.

Jessie Mae Robinson died in October, 1966 at only age forty-eight. Yet her catalogue of works are there for the taking (including Lana Del Ray this decade) and she has yet another singular distinction: she was the first African-American female to be admitted to ASCAP— the performing-rights society that had been slow to embrace the rise of African-American popular music — in 1953.

   Jesse Mae Robinson (1918 — 1966)

Of all of her works, my favorite is one recorded in late 1950 and released in 1951 — sung by Charles Brown (whose most noted hit was “Merry Christmas, Baby”). Black Night stayed on top of the R&B charts for fourteen weeks — and no single ever since has stayed longer. It was subsequently recorded by Muddy Waters, Willie Nelson/Dr. John, Buddy Guy, James Cotton and the Roomful of Blues.

In 2005, nine years after Charles Brown’s death, the song was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame as a "Classic of Blues Recording”.

Nobody cares about me I ain't even got a friend Baby's gone and left me When will my troubles end?

I've got no one to talk with To tell my troubles to Don't even know I'm living Since I lost you

My mother has the trouble My father has it too Brother's in Korea And I don't know just what to do

Black night, black night is falling Oh how I hate to be alone I keep crying for my baby But now another day is gone

x xYouTube Video